‘They Were Cheering’: Freed Israeli Recalls Harrowing Details of Being Taken By Hamas And Paraded Through Gaza
Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall unveiled this week his two-part Fox Nation docuseries, “Surviving Hamas: A Benjamin Hall Special,” which included harrowing interviews with survivors from the devastating October 7th attack on southern Israel.
Hall, who suffered catastrophic injuries in 2022 while covering the war in Ukraine, traveled to Israel to cover the ongoing trauma and recovery in the border communities attacked by Hamas gunmen some six months ago.
Hall spoke to Maya Regev, 21, who was taken from the Supernova Music Festival, where Hamas gunmen butchered some 400 partygoers, using brutal tactics including torture and sexual assault.
Regev recalled her captors parading her through Gaza, “They drove in the city just to show everyone what they caught and screaming Alla Ahkbar. And I was with my head down because I didn’t want to to look at everyone, and I didn’t want that everyone will see me. So one of them just grabbed my hair, grabbed me by here by my hand, and put me back so everyone could see my face.”
“The people who are watching. Were they celebrating?” Hall asked.
“Yeah. They were cheering like Allahu Akbar by everyone screaming. Everyone happy. It was horrible,” she replied.
Hall and Regev, who was released in a negotiated exchange, also discussed her time in captivity, “You always hear about the tunnels of Hamas, but I’ve never even once thought to myself that I’m going to be kidnapped and taken down to the tunnels.”
Hall also asked about the future, “What do you what do you think about the future and rebuilding and looking forward and how your life might pan out?”
“First of all, all I think about is being like being well and to heal and to walk again. I was a very, I was very sporty. I was doing sports ever since I was a three. So to run again. I really wanted to be a doctor,” she replied, adding:
And just, the most important thing is to just tell the world about what really is happening. Like, I’m really trying to do it right now because I still have friends there, that I really care about. And I know how hard is it to be there. So I keep fighting for them because they can’t talk, they can’t scream what they want, so I scream here for them.”
Hall discussed the interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News and explained the importance of Maya’s story, “Yeah, she was held up. She was paraded inside Gaza. She was tortured by some of these people, by both a doctor there as well as a teacher there. And, you know, it sheds a light. It reminds us why the conflict began. Reminds us all those people who were killed, injured, taken hostage on October 7th. And I think that’s the message that everyone in Israel wants to remind people that Hamas still exists at the moment, and they want to do everything they can to get rid of the threat to Israel.”
Hall also visited Kibbutz Nir Oz and spoke to a woman whose brother, sister, and three nieces were violently murdered by Hamas as she hid in her own home in terror.
“And this is a minute that, like, I can’t explain even what you feel like where you know, 50m from you, someone is killing your family, and there’s nothing you can do because someone is trying to kill you as well,” said a very upset Amit Siman Tov.
Watch above via Fox.
